Beginning Class in Greenville, SC

Another great class in Greenville. It’s funny that I can’t seem to find many students here in Charleston, but the ones interested in learning carving in the Greenville area seems unlimited.

Ahh – an artist is never recognized in her own town???

I really love to teach beginning classes – to see the change from the trepidation and caution at the beginning, to an increased level of confidence after only 8 hours of class where they can look at a completed piece, that is quite complicated, and say to themselves proudly “I carved that”. It’s great to hear when the students are excited about persuing more advanced carving projects.

When I was first interested in learning woodcarving, I tried to teach myself out of a book. It was very frustrating, and not very successful. When I eventually found a teacher, Konstantinos Papadakis (out of Minneapolis), with the proper guidance and support, I learned so much quicker. Woodcarving is much easier to learn with a teacher guiding you through the proper techniques. Without that, there can be much time wasted in trial and error, and also the real possibility of developing some habits in the carving technique.

The first project that we carve in the class is a “donut”. I know this sounds a little simple, but it really shows the proper direction to carve when dealing with the grain. If you look at the arrows on the photo, those are the correct directions to carve in order to round over the edges of the donut. It’s difficult to see, but the grain direction is horizontal.